DAMIAN DOMINGO

DOMINGO, DAMIAN b. Tondo, Manila 1800 or 1801 d. Manila 1834. According to his will of 1831, he is

the son of Domingo Macario and Erminigildia Gabriela. His parents' possession of two Christian saints'

names instead of a Christian name and a traditional Spanish or Filipino surname confirms that they were

Chinese immigrants converted to Christianity, or children of Chinese immigrants who could not claim any

important Chinese surname. This fact dismisses earlier suppositions or claims that Domingo was descended

from Spanish nobility. He married Lucia Casas with whom he had 10 children, two of whom died in infancy.

Domingo established his reputation as an artist by painting exquisitely lifelike miniatures on ivory. By 1821 he

already had a large following that he had to open his house to his trainees. On 2 Dec 1823, the Socieciad

Economica de Amigos de Pais formalized his workshop into the Academia de Dibujo y Pintura. His

appointment as Professor was confirmed on 13 Jun, 1826. On 9 Apr 1829, he gave the first examinations in

the said school.

Sometime in the mid 1820s, Domingo must have met Rafael Daniel Baboom, a Catholic Indian merchant from

Madras, who traded in silk. Baboom engaged Damian to paint albums of costumes to depict the fashions and

occupations of the various citizens of the Philippines. Damian executed several of those albums. Six of these

are known, one was destroyed by fire during WWII, while the album at the Newberry Library is the only one

that Damian signed on all the constituting plates individually.

Only four easel paintings are certainly by him: the Nuestra Senora del Rosario dando El Santisimo Rosario al

Santo Domingo 11 Santa Catalina (Our Lady of the Rosary Giving the Most Holy Rosary to Saint Dominic

and Saint Catherine), ca 1815; La Sagrada Familia (The Holy Family),ca 1830; La Catedra de San Pedro (The

Seat of Saint Peter),ca 1825; and La Inmaculada Concepcion (The Immaculate Conception). The first three are

in the possession of his descendants, the last in the Xavier University Folk life Museum and Archives. All

these pieces are done in fine miniaturistic technique. This Domingo achieved by using five Chinese sable

brushes, some equipped with just one bristle. Domingo's brushwork is even finer in the albums of costume in

which he used gouache or water based tempera on pith paper. Damian's self portrait on ivory exists, his Sinitic

origins made evident by his slit eyes.